christmas eve
by tatty ted
Summary: George gets a surprise on Christmas Eve. - —George/Richard.


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><p><strong>christmas eve<br>**when the band finished playing  
>they howled out for more<br>fairytale of new york — pogues.

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><p>She gets home from working a double shift and as she closes the door behind her, she realises she won't get any sleep this evening. The reason been, because Christmas is tomorrow. Thankfully, she doesn't have to work tomorrow so she gets the whole day with her son.<p>

She drops her handbag on the stairs, takes off her coat and hangs it up on the peg. Then ever so quietly, she tip-toes up the stairs, across the landing past Tom's bedroom and reaches the spare room.

Opening the door, she goes over to the wardrobe and takes out three large carrier bags. She takes them downstairs, leaves them in the living room and heads upstairs to take out some more. She takes down all the carrier bags from the cupboard, leaves the bedroom and closes the door quietly behind her.

Then she returns to the living room, where she sits down on the floor and begins to wrap up the christmas presents.

She doesn't realise she's brought him quite a lot this year and is entirely grateful that she chose to wrap most of them up wheen she first brought them. She goes through a carrier bag of presents, finished wrapping them and was about to put them under the tree when she heard a knock at the door.

She found herself looking at the clock and upon seeing it nearly half past ten, wondered who it was. Getting up off the floor, she walks towards the door, unlocks it and pulls it open. Standing on the doorstep is Richard.

"Richard?"

"George." He begins and there's a little moment of silence, "I was just passing and I thought I'd wish you a merry christmas."

She smiles but then remembers a number of things. One, he lives on the opposite side of town, two, he had already said merry christmas at work and three, well there wasn't a number three _yet_.

"Didn't you already wish me that at work?"

He nods slowly, clearly embarrassed. They are stood in silence, both of them transfixed on each other that they've both failed to notice the snow that's beginning to fall and stick to the ground.

"What's the real reason?" She asks breaking the silence.

"I wanted to help you wrap Tom's presents." He admits. She doesn't answer right away but she makes eye contact with him. She wonders whether he's been serious, would he really come all that way on Christmas Eve to help her?

She smiles, her eyes shine and she nods, "I could do with the help." She responds and lets him into the house. Although her house is no longer warm, _(as she's heated the street by having the door open for ages)_ she knows he'll be grateful to get out of the cold.

Together, it doesn't take them long to wrap the christmas presents and put them neatly underneath the tree. There's that many presents that Richard jokes she won't be able to see the tree if she gets any more presents.

Next they put out the cookies and milk for Santa although this leaves Richard a little puzzled.

"I thought Santa has a mince pie and Rudolph has a carrot at Christmas?"

"Traditionally, he can have a mince pie or he can have cookies and milk. When I was little, I used to put out cookies and milk for him so that's why I've carried on the tradition with Tom."

"Right." He answers then looks at the clock. He sees that it's two minutes to twelve and realises it's probably best for him to make a move. He wouldn't want to intrude on their special day.

"I best be off." He tells her and he's about to stand up but a hand on his arm stops him. He looks down at her hand and then looks back up, their eyes meeting again. He stares at her and she finds herself drowning in his eyes.

"It's late. Why don't you stay the night?" She questions. He knows it's late and by the time he gets back to his house, it would have be gone half past twelve, so he nods and accepts her offer of staying the night.

She smiles and he smiles back. "Tom's missed you." She whispers before she hears that he's missed Tom too.

"You can sleep in the spare room, I'll just get you a pillow and a duvet." She turns off the living room light and goes up the stairs, heading into her own bedroom. Going into the wardrobe, she takes out a pillow and duvet and goes down the corridor.

Knocking on the door, she opens it and puts the duvet and pillow on the bed;

"There you go, make yourself comfy." She tells him as she walks back to the door.

"George?"

She turns around, her eyes meeting his for a third time this evening and she nods, "Yes?"

There's a silence between them before he says, "Merry Christmas."

She smiles softly, "Merry Christmas Richard." She replies, walks out of the bedroom and closes the door behind her. She walks down the corridor, reaches her bedroom and goes inside.

Closing the door, she throws herself on her bed and sighs deeply.

Now she's even more confused than ever about her feeling for Richard, why did love have to be so damn complicated?

"It doesn't matter." She tells herself, throws the duvet over her and closes her eyes, "It's Christmas."

And with that, she falls asleep, unaware that Richard is having the same thoughts down the corridor.

/

_one day, you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before, like a switch has been flicked somewhere. — _dana scully_._

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><p><strong>an**: if you like it enough to favourite/alert, please leave a review.


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